


My Heart's Still Made of Gold

by zade



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Artist Grantaire, Chromesthesia, Depression, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Gender Dysphoria, Happy Ending, Headaches & Migraines, Healthy Relationships, Hurt/Comfort, Karaoke, M/M, So much comfort, Synesthesia, Therapy, Trans Character, Trans Grantaire, also, black grantaire, carpe yolo, honestly mostly fluff, student les amis, this fic is a mess of feels and colors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 00:25:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13422798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zade/pseuds/zade
Summary: The first time he hears Enjolras speak, it’s like a supernova. Gold surrounds him, envelopes him, with flashes of red and black, bright and angry exploding at the edges of Grantaire’s vision, a maelstrom of sound and color.  Grantaire gasps and can tell it’s notable because Jehan whispers, “R?  You okay?”  The concern in his voice is soothing blue, but it is almost nonexistent compared to the burst of gold that is blinding him.





	My Heart's Still Made of Gold

**Author's Note:**

> tis I, gabe, back with some ficcage
> 
> warnings: Grantaire has synethesia, gets migraines, has BAD depression but gets help, and has dysphoria but it's only mentioned, Enjolras says one thoughtless thing but apologizes, i don't really think there are real warnings for this one??? oh some alcohol use
> 
> title from Kesha's Rainbow bc that song is so good and every song gives me R feels lbr
> 
> I don't have synethesia but I had a friend in college who had this type, and I based this story off of research and what she told me about her experiences.
> 
> so many thanks to [gaylukeskywalkvr](http://gaylukeskywalkvr.tumblr.com) for the beta and the discussion and all the grammar help I ignored

The first time he hears Enjolras speak, it’s like a supernova. Gold surrounds him, envelopes him, with flashes of red and black, bright and angry exploding at the edges of Grantaire’s vision, a maelstrom of sound and color. Grantaire gasps and can tell it’s notable because Jehan whispers, “R? You okay?” The concern in his voice is soothing blue, but it is almost nonexistent compared to the burst of gold that is blinding him.

He turns to Jehan, and Jehan sighs sympathetically. He whips a handkerchief out of his pocket and is dabbing at Grantaire’s face before Grantaire realizes he is crying. “Jesus, R,” Jehan whispers, glancing around to make sure Grantaire hasn’t brought attention to them, because Jehan is considerate like that. Grantaire has only just now met Jehan’s friends and this is the most embarrassed Grantaire had been in days, at least. “Do you need to leave? We can leave.”

Grantaire shakes his head. He’s not sure if he’ll ever leave again. He may just plant roots and live in this booth for the rest of his life and try to suck up Enjolras’s sunlight with his skin. “I’m good,” he says softly, and his voice is a light grey mist at the edges of his vision.

After his speech, after Courfeyrac and Bahorel help Enjolras off the table that he was standing on, air sparking with their laughter, green and purple bubbling pastel and lovely. Enjolras walks right up to Grantaire, laughing peals of bright, effervescent laughter, and reaches out to shake his hand.

Up close, his skin is so pale it’s like ivory—or no, his hand extends and his deep dark veins bifurcate his skin like carrera marble, like he is a sculpted god, with hair as golden as his proclamations and Grantaire breathes in like a punch to the gut. He grips Enjolras’ hand, probably too hard, but Enjolras is smiling and Jesus, he even has perfect teeth.

“Hi, I’m Enjolras, welcome!” His smile is so effusive and his speaking voice is blindingly, passionately red that Grantaire could drown in him and die happy.

“Grantaire,” he says, and Grantaire can only manage that much before the lump is his throat becomes insurmountable.

Jehan steps in, bless him. “Enjolras, this is my very good friend Grantaire. He’s the one who stepped in and played background for me at my last poetry reading! I was telling him about our group, and since we voted to include community members and not just students, I brought him along!” Jehan’s tone is breezy blue and sandy yellow and warm.

Enjolras’s expression shifts from a smile to puzzled to disappointment. “Oh. I just assumed you were a student.” His tone goes grey and slightly stormy, and tinged with veins of pity. Grantaire barely manages a smile before Enjolras is called away.

His face reads like a book, it must, because Jehan smiles and puts a hand on his shoulder. “What would you like to do now, R?” Pity from him, too.

Pity is always mauve.

They go to a bar and drink. Alcohol dulls his colors, but weed makes them stronger. The first time he had tried smoking, Jehan had found him curled on himself in a corner of the bar crying and pulling at his hair. He hadn’t been able to think around the swirls of color and sound that were pouring in his eyes and out his mouth, so loud and bright and vicious he hadn’t been able to see anything past them, blinded and paralyzed and afraid. Alcohol, though, alcohol makes everything feel like it’s underwater; the colors are there, but muted, ignorable. He wants to ignore them, now.

Jehan goes shot for shot with him and they trade words of poetry back and forth and through the haze, Jehan’s words are like a swimming pool, aquamarine and translucent and Grantaire’s are always grey as a cloudy fall day.

He meets with Bahorel the next day, who he had met the day before and whose enthusiasm had made all his words vibrant and electric, like the visual equivalent of pins and needles or a static shock. Bahorel greets him in bright red and leads him to the boxing ring inexplicably in his garage.

They spar, Grantaire’s vision fizzling with Bahorel’s bright blue laughter as they fight. In the end, Grantaire is tired, sweaty, and Bahorel is too, but he’s still laughing, sky blue. He bows to Grantaire, comically, then takes his hand and leads him in waltz. Grantaire laughs, too, in so light a grey that it is almost white as they spin and spin.

Afterwards, collapsed on the mat, Bahorel says, wistfully and moss green, “I wish I had met you earlier. I feel like I’ve known you forever and simultaneously I am so angry that we’ve been living in the same place for three years and I never knew you!”

Grantaire smiles and punches lazily at Bahorel’s muscular thigh. “You know me now.”

Bahorel smiles back; all is right in the world and his satisfaction is a mustard yellow. “True! Are you planning on coming to the next meeting? We’re doing twice a week this semester—or,” and his words fade and flicker into chartreuse with embarrassment, “this, um, season? Year chunk?”

Grantaire laughs. “You can say semester. Just because I’m not a student doesn’t mean I don’t know what semesters are.”

“I just didn’t want to leave you out. Or make you feel like you aren’t welcome because you’re not in school.” His earnestness is lavender, and it lingers, hazily, like smoke from the smoke machine Jehan bought himself to give his poetry readings a little something something.

“Don’t worry. You didn’t.”

Grantaire had tried college. His personal motto was “try everything once,” and he had tried his hardest. He liked school; he loved to read and he liked logic puzzles, he was good at math and debate, he could memorize things at the drop of a hat, and it was the perfect way to socialize. Really, everything about college was great for Grantaire except for the classes.

Lectures were a mind-numbingly monotonous beige slurry, and seminars were a mix of that and the violent burnt umber of self-righteous students and obnoxiously confident intellectuals. Debates sometimes grew so loud they blocked his vision, and boredom crept in from the edges until he had to squint to take notes. It was worse than high school, somehow, and every class left him with a raging headache or a void where his new knowledge was supposed to go. When he had headaches, reading words became harder too, with his vision confined to a narrow pinhole. Within a semester he had given himself an ulcer from all the NSAIDs he had taken to ward off his nearly nightly migraines. At that point he had given up, choosing to read on his own time and play music and do art and maybe struggle but maybe thrive.

It is a mixed bag, so far.

He meets Jehan two days later on campus at the music building. Grantaire works most nights in a bar, some mornings in a gallery, some afternoons at a bookstore, and also walks dogs. It’s a low work day, and Jehan sneaks him into a practice room so he can have access to a piano while Jehan stares at trees and writes poetry.

He likes composing best on the piano, but it’s not the only instrument he plays. He taps out a few phrases, writes them down. He sees piano as the color of cherry wood and cello as bronze. Music is overpowering, overwhelming, like bathing in light and sound and wrapping himself in palettes of melody and harmony. 

Grantaire used to sing, but then his voice turned to black. Sometimes he still sings a phrase or two, to guide his fingers, but piano is so beautiful and his voice just fucks it all up. If he’s quiet enough, it’s almost unnoticeable. If he’s silent, it’s ideal. He’s in a groove, leaning into the piano as the wiry cherry swirls in his vision when the door opens.

“Jehan! I saw your name on the sign up sheet and I—oh.” Enjolras is all the way in the practice room before he realizes that Grantaire isn’t Jehan. “You’re not Jehan.”

“True,” Grantaire replies.

“I saw his name on the sign up sheet,” Enjolras says again.

“Yes. I don’t have access to a piano anywhere else, so sometimes Jehan signs me in. Why, you going to turn me in?” Grantaire raises an eyebrow, challenging. It has been only days since the meeting but he’s already forgotten how beautiful Enjolras is, so blonde and pale and conventionally attractive and uncommonly beautiful.

Grantaire spends a lot of time thinking about colors—thinking in colors—and if he had to pick a color for his own skin tone he would say umber, or on a bad day, he wouldn’t pick one at all. Enjolras is luminous, and Grantaire is the dirt beneath his shoes.

“No! Of course not.” Enjolras hesitates, then, gently in waves of lavender, offers, “You have a lovely voice.”

Grantaire, frowning says, “No…?” because he is terrible at taking compliments, and sure, Enjolras may think his voice sounds good, but that’s probably because he can’t see the tar black of it.

Enjolras frowns, too. “Were you not singing?”

“No, I was.”

Enjolras visibly decides to let that go, head shaking and shoulders shrugging in mild incomprehension. “I thought Jehan said you accompanied him. I’ve never seen him read in a place with a piano.”

Grantaire isn’t entirely sure why Enjolras hasn’t left yet. “I also play the cello.”

Enjolras closes the door behind him and leans against it, effectively trapping Grantaire in this game of twenty questions. “And you like poetry.”

Grantaire grins and shows all his teeth, which are not as straight or white as Enjolras or his teeth. “I like words. I was a fair to mediocre Hamlet in high school: ‘What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me.’” He puts on his performance voice and drops into the character. Grantaire figures he’s not so different from most depressed boys; most of them see themselves in Hamlet, too.

It’s the same monologue he had first spoken for Jehan, who then mock fainted onto Grantaire’s lap, and peppered him with praise for a solid twenty minutes. Jehan is unreal.

Enjolras is wide-eyed. “Oh,” he says breathily, and his reds are deep and intense, and it’s really, really sexy, and Grantaire is a weak man. “Jehan said you were an artist, but I assumed he meant a visual artist.”

“I am,” Grantaire affirms, because with his every waking moment flooded with colors, how could he not be a painter? “I paint. Compose, sometimes. Dance, when the need arises.”

Enjolras looks baffled, sounds it, too, with yellows and greens like a bruise. “You don’t act?”

“No.” Grantaire makes a big sweeping gesture, meant to encompass him and all that he is and his words are inky and insistent. “For starters, who would cast me? But also, it turns out there is slightly more money to be made by a mediocre painter than a mediocre actor.”

“Mediocre!” Enjolras cries, affronted on Grantaire’s behalf, and again, there is the bright, blinding gold and Grantaire feels breathless. He takes a deep breath. “What else can you do?”

“Are you the only one who gets to ask questions, or can I ask some, too?”

Enjolras smiles. His lips are blush colored, pink and thin, but dramatically curved. If he were anyone else, Grantaire would assume he was flirting, but he’s Enjolras, he is made of pearl and diamond and Grantaire is clay. “Answer mine first.” A wave of gold, crashing over his senses.

“I fence, I box. I was a decent ballerino and a really shitty tap dancer. And I read a lot, have a good memory for words.”

Enjolras looks overwhelmed, which is a really good look on him. It makes Grantaire think really inappropriate thoughts, which is almost blasphemy because Enjolras is so still and gold and godly. “Is there anything you can’t do?”

Grantaire laughs, big breathy puffs of smog. “Academia.” He leans forward and Enjolras does, too. They aren’t close, but they’re closer, inching towards each other. “How about you? What are you studying? What do you hope to be doing in five years? What are your biggest weaknesses?”

Enjolras laughs. “Is this a job interview?” He doesn’t let Grantaire answer. “I’m double majoring in poli-sci and philosophy, five years from now I hope to be annihilating the patriarchy, and I would say my biggest weaknesses are my tendency to miss the trees for the forest and also my tenuous grasp on anger management. Do I get the job?”

“You’re definitely a top contender.” He leans back, rests against the piano which makes a couple discordant noises and red fizzles sharply in his view. “You were looking for Jehan?”

Enjolras flushes, cheeks apple red and he bites his lip. Charming, everything about him is charming. “I was going to ask him for your number. To invite you back personally to another meeting. But…” Enjolras is still blushing, and his words are strong and gold again, but if they were an explosion before, they’re gentle as the tide now, surrounding Grantaire and pulling him beneath their waves. He hands Grantaire his phone. “I would really like your number. Please.”

Grantaire laughs, takes the phone and adds his number, and tries not to pay attention to the way his heart jumps, when his own laughter looks maybe tinged with gold. He thinks, as Enjolras leaves the room with a smile and a wave, that that is the end of that.

It isn’t. Enjolras texts him. A lot. Grantaire listens to song after song until he finds one that sounds gold to make Enjolras’s ringtone. He smiles every time he gets a text from Enjolras, and Jehan teases him mercilessly, in fond sky blues and bubbly periwinkles.

Grantaire goes to the next meeting, and the next, learns the Amis, the colors they speak in. He’s read, online, that most people with what he has don’t see specific people in specific colors but fuck the internet; he knows what he hears or sees or senses and most people have a color preference for their normal speaking voice. Jehan tends to blue, Courfeyrac speaks in purples; Eponine falls into oranges, Combeferre in navy; Cosette is rose gold, Joly and Feuilly in greens, Bossuet and Musichetta varying wildly, and Marius in cream; Enjolras always in gold and red and black.

The time he spends with Les Amis is effortless. Meetings lead to more meetings, which lead to political action, which lead, somehow, to Saturday night karaoke. Grantaire goes when he can, sits with his newfound family, and sometimes lets Courfeyrac drag him up to the stage for a duet, or to be serenaded.

From Combeferre and Enjolras’ faces on one such night they know they’re in for it, because Courfeyrac and Grantaire had been whispering to the karaoke man for far longer than it should have taken to pick a song. Courfeyrac takes his hand, grinning, and leads him upstairs to the stage.

“Hello, kits and cats, this is Sonny and I’m Cher,” Courfeyrac says, speaking much too close to the microphone and pausing to click shot glasses with Grantaire, “and we’re about to blow your fucking minds.”

Grantaire is drunk enough that Courfeyrac’s voice is like a gentle purple wash over his eyes. He grins and links arms with Courfeyrac, pouring their shots into each others’ mouths. They mostly succeed, which Grantaire thinks probably has more to do with the hour today they spent practicing than with either of their level of sobriety.

Bahorel cheers loudly for their success, and Grantaire can see Enjolras roll his eyes dramatically, but he can also see the smile tugging at the corner of Enjolras’ mouth. He looks over to Courfeyrac who winks, and reaches out a hand to him as the opening chords of “My Heart Will Go On” starts up. Marius, the shmuck, boos, and it’s all Grantaire can do to keep from laughing. The song plays up until the lyrics should start at which point it changes, suddenly, to Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley. Grantaire and Courfeyrac break into their poorly choreographed dance moves, and between Rickrolling the crowd, and at one point literally doing the Macarena, Grantaire realizes with a start his laughter is popping in bubbles of light green.

He stumbles, drunkenly, but Courfeyrac catches him with a wide grin. They keep singing, off key, and Courfeyrac keeps a hand on his shoulder still looking at him fondly, like he maybe doesn’t mind holding Grantaire up at all.

They finish to the sounds of reluctant clapping from their friends, and Grantaire stumbles down the steps, drunk on stupid stunts and the color of his own voice.

“Your liver is going to hate you in the morning,” Enjolras says, sipping fizzy water through a straw. He will usually join in and have a beer with the, but he has a paper due on Monday, and ever since Gavroche called Enjolras his idol, Enjolras has been aggressively modeling good behavior for his frequent houseguest.

“Excuse you,” Grantaire says in an exiting shade of grey, snagging the seat next to Enjolras that Bahorel vacates. “My liver hates me right now. My head, on the other hand, is absolutely going to hate me in the morning.”

Enjolras takes another sip of his seltzer and then offers the glass to Grantaire. “Want some?” is cherry chapstick almost-red, and Enjolras’s smile is candy sweet.

Grantaire decides that the seltzer is probably the answer to his suddenly dry throat, and takes a sip (through Enjolras’s straw!), and grins. “Yup, that definitely offset my hangover, thank you very much, Apollo.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes again, almost painfully fond, and Grantaire’s smile could split his face. “Take care of yourself, R,” he says, then goes to the bar for a refill.

Jehan drags Grantaire home before he can do anything stupider than what he has already done.

“I think they like me,” he confesses to Jehan, half-way home and more than half drunk, and words still marvelously not black. “I think I like them, too.”  
“Oh, R,” Jehan says mournfully, teal and crashing over him like waves. “You’re an idiot, but you’re my idiot.” He throws an arm over Grantaire’s shoulder and pulls him in close. “And of course they like you. It was a foregone conclusion; you’re obnoxiously likable.”

“Obnoxious is right,” Grantaire counters, but he doesn’t really feel it. It’s harder to feel down on himself when his words spiral across his vision, bright and lively. He knows it won’t last, but he’s glad that he gets to see it at all.

He loves them all, and shockingly, they seem to love him back. He has tons of friends, he always has, submerging his depression in aggressive socializing, but Les Amis are instantly closer to him, more meaningful to him, than any other friends he has known. They fill his life with light and love and color, and he could drown in all the permutations of his senses.

It makes his painting better, too. He used to listen to a song over and over, trying to capture the way he hears them in paintings, and he loves music. His classical works are subdued and flowing, his pop music tends to be frantic and bright. His new work is better, though. A piece of Jehan reciting You Are Jeff for him, a triptych of Combeferre’s thesis paper. They let him, even though he’s only told Jehan about his synesthesia. No one gets it, but they’re content to read and speak and sit with Grantaire as he tries to nail down the exact shades and motions of their voices.

Enjolras is harder to convince. He stands in Grantaire’s messy studio, resplendent and exasperated, holding his latest speech in one hand and a water bottle in the other. “I don’t get it, though, R,” he whines in a petulant peach. “I know you tend to paint in expressionist styles—”

“Abstract, Apollo, I paint abstract.”

“But you don’t want to paint me? You want to paint my voice? What does that even mean—and also, I mean, this one isn’t done yet. I have the final of my last one? When we were talking about getting free-trade coffee on campus, we could use that.”

Grantaire doesn’t want a coffee painting, he wants the one Enjolras is writing on trans rights. To be fair, Enjolras can get passionate about anything, but there’s a different intensity to his passion about individual rights vs. capitalism.

“No, this one. I’ll let you know if there’s anything you should fix, so two birds, one stone.” Grantaire already picked out his palette because he knows the speech is going to be fifteen minutes at best, and unlike Jehan, he’s not sure Enjolras would read it more than once.

He has a beautiful glowly gold that he spent literal hours picking out in his favorite supply store, a slightly shimmery white, a bold candy red, and his darkest black, with a smattering of other colors at the opposite end, just in case. He doesn’t think he’ll need too much of them, but he’d rather be safe than have to pause Enjolras partway.

“You mean you’ll pick it to pieces,” Enjolras drawls, rolling his eyes, but he’s smiling and his voice lilts into lavender.

“Tomato,” Grantaire says, “another identical tomato.” Enjolras laughs bright flirty pink and Grantaire’s face heats up. One of the very few boons of his skin is the fact that it hides blushes like a mask.

“That’s a yes, then.”

“This is a subject where I can say we are firmly on the same side, and also that I have good information on.” He can tell how much Enjolras wants to ask, but he doesn’t because Enjolras would never put anyone on the spot. “Get with the reading Apollo.”

Enjolras scrunches his eyes like he wants to be frowning, but he’s still smiling. “You’ve called me that twice now.” He’s rosy pink in face and voice, tender.

Grantaire grins, ducking his head behind his canvas. “I calls em like I sees em. God of truth, prophecy, healing, the sun, Enjolras, the sun!”

“I think you missed a few epithets.”

“And I think you’re stalling.”

Enjolras sighs dramatically in little shocks of scarlet, takes a big sip of water, and begins reading. He hasn’t gotten that familiar with it, so it’s not as intense as the first time Grantaire heard him speak, but that’s good, because Grantaire needs enough of his field of view open that he can actually see the canvas.

Everything is instantly gold. The gold is in bright round bursts with sharp edges of red and black. It’s beautiful and insistent and he dives in, painting a central swatch of gold, the sun, and working outwards, concentric circles and pointed lines. The images morph as Enjolras continues, but unlike with Bossuet, whose colors change from sentence to sentence (making painting him a frantic mess of colors), Enjolras’s colors flow seamlessly.

He is still painting when Enjolras finishes reading. Enjolras hesitates, shifts from foot to foot, then starts in on it again. Grantaire is finished before Enjolras completes his second recitation, so he takes the time to add flourishes, to even out some of his messier brush strokes.

“Tada?” Enjolras says with apathetic spirit fingers once he finishes.

“It was perfect—you were perfect. Also? That part in the middle you said gender reconstructive surgery and you should change to that gender-affirming surgery which I am absolutely sure you knew and just weren’t thinking about.” Grantaire wipes the paint off his hands, or tries to, but it was acrylic so it’s pretty dry already.

Enjolras blushes, blotchy carmine on his ivory cheeks. “I did know that. I—thank you for correcting me.” He drops the speech pages onto the floor a takes a tentative step towards Grantaire, his words so small they’re like a red vapor. “Can I see it?”

Grantaire motions him over and Enjolras gasps when he sees it. “That’s—that’s me? That’s incredible, Grantaire.” He’s leaning over Grantaire to see and his skin looks so soft and pale and Grantaire has to physically restrain himself from leaning closer and—

He pushes his chair back hard with a squeal of tangerine sparks, almost overbalancing backwards as Enjolras blinks at him owlishly. “Sorry…I’m—I’m sorry.”

“Are you all right?” Enjolras asks in blue concern.

“Yeah,” Grantaire says. “I’m fine.” His words are black and his mood is black and he wants a drink but he doesn’t want to hear Enjolras’s disapproval in hard angles of crimson and gold.

He makes an appointment at the clinic as soon as Enjolras leaves. They offer mental health care for free because it’s with med students instead of professionals, and Grantaire doesn’t get to see any single almost-doctor for more than few months, but they keep good notes and it’s better than nothing.

He gets an appointment the same day and sits in the waiting room with his head in his hands and waits for someone his own age to tell him things he should already know. The nurse is the same, and she recognizes him.

“Grantaire, sweetie, you’re in for a treat today! He is smart and serious and very compassionate. Ten-out-of-ten baby doctor.” Her enthusiasm is almost iridescent and pink, but the word doctor is harsh and white, clinical and painful. She walks side by side with him to the appointment room, because he’s been enough times to know where it is.

Grantaire laughs as he opens the door for himself. “Ah, a good junior doctor then?”

“Best of this batch of doctorlings.” She winks and closes the door behind her, leaving him alone with the plain boring furniture and ugly cream wallpaper.

He’s still laughing when his med student enters the room but that cuts off pretty quickly when his brain catches up with his eyes. “Fuck.”

Combeferre manages to look surprised and sad and professional somehow all at once. “Oh. Um. Our files are under ID number not name, or else I wouldn’t—I obviously can’t help you in a professional capacity—I...hi, R.” His professional voice is boring and beige and impersonal and it makes Grantaire want to melt into the floor out of sheer embarrassment.

Grantaire tries to smile back but he feels like the ground is tilting beneath his feet, despite the fact that he’s sitting, so his face probably looks a little more like a grimace. “Hi, Combeferre.”

Combeferre smiles a very professional smile and sits down across from him. “In an attempt at transparency, I should let you know that I read your file, but everything I’ve read is obviously confidential and I will absolutely keep it that way.”

Grantaire nods, because duh. It isn’t so much he worries that Combeferre will share anything and more that Grantaire will go down further (if possible) in Combeferre’s estimation.

“And, if you’re looking for something more regular than this, I know someone who does sliding scale therapy for qpoc. Particularly trans people of color. If you’re interested.”

Grantaire nods again, numb and tired, despite the soothing yellow of Combeferre’s tone. He is embarrassed, too, that Combeferre has read his file, knows his weak points and his shortcomings in explicit, medical detail. “That’s. That’s cool, I guess.”

Combeferre slips his Medical Professional expression off and smiles a warmer smile at Grantaire. “We can talk if you want? In a completely non medical-advice sort of way. Since we’re both here.” He’s navy, now, like normal, dark smooth undulations of color like a sine curve.

Grantaire laughs, nervously. “We don’t have to, really. It’s fine. I can go.” He starts to stand, but Combeferre reaches out and touches his arm.

“Honestly? I’m completely overwhelmed with work at the moment and I would absolutely relish a chance to sit down and talk to someone I like. I haven’t spent a lot of one on one time with you, and that’s something I’d been hoping to change.” Combeferre’s face is honest and open as ever, devastating in his easy affection.

Grantaire slumps back down into the chair, defeated by how much he genuinely likes Combeferre.

Combeferre grins at him, then says in a confident dark green, “I heard from Jehan you like space?”

“I do,” Grantaire admits, reluctantly, pulling his chair closer to Combeferre’s. “Do you?”

He nods. “When I was younger I wanted to be an astrophysicist, but I was never good enough at the math.”

Grantaire laughs. “An astrophysicist, not an astronaut?” He frowns, following his thought through to the end. “Wait, but you’re good enough at math to be a doctor?”

Combeferre’s laughter is dark brown, like warm waves of chocolate. “It takes a lot less math to be a doctor than an astrophysicist, trust me.”

“I do,” Grantaire says, maybe a little more earnestly than he means to. Combeferre places a warm hand on his, affectionate and gentle. “I thought doctors were meant to have cold hands?”

The look Combeferre gives him is more wicked than Grantaire had imagined him capable of looking, and when he speaks, his voice is a teasing blue, dark but not ominous. “I went into medicine with the explicit goal of breaking down stereotypes, I’ll have you know.”

Grantaire’s laughter is a puff of light grey, almost white, and he’s so surprised at it he nearly does a double take at an image that only he can see.

“How did you feel about Cassini?” Combeferre asks, being a gentlemen and not commenting on the fact that Grantaire’s brain essentially stalled a moment before.

“I cried,” Grantaire says, a gentle mist of almost-white at the bottom of his vision. 

Combeferre squeezes his hand, and it’s the sort of perfect friendship moment that he thought only existed in teen dramas before he had met Les Amis. His amis, if he’s being brutally honest, and the way Combeferre is staring at him makes him want to be honest. 

Grantaire says, “Yeah, I know,” and his voice is tinged in blue, buoyed against the sea of Combeferre’s coffee laughter.

Grantaire meets Fantine the next week. She is dressed in jeans and a sweater, which wasn’t what he was expecting from a mental health professional, but puts him surprisingly at ease. She shakes his hand and says, “Grantaire! I’m so happy to meet you, I heard about you from Combeferre. I’m glad he referred you to me, I trust his judgment.” Her voice is just warmer than a boring beige slurry, just yellow enough that it feels like she cares.

Fantine smiles. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself?” she asks, so he does.

“I have synesthesia—not the one where letters are colors or feelings or whatever—I have chromesthesia.”

Fantine’s confusion is a pop of canary yellow in the center of his vision. “I’m sorry to admit, I know almost nothing about synesthesia. Want to tell me about how you experience it? And then I’ll do some research on my own time.”

He’s never had a medical professional offer to research something for him before, but he tries not look dumbfounded, or plain dumb. “I see noises—or, I hear them, but I also seem them. Different people and instruments and emotions in different colors. Like the Visualizer on itunes? Sort of?”

She doesn’t know about synesthesia, but assures him she’ll look into it. He tells her about his colors, his own voice, his depression, and it’s easy. He’s good at therapy. He’s been speaking to people on and off for years and he knows what to say and how to say it.

He likes her.

She’s hard on him though. “Did your voice turn black, do you think, because of your depression or your dysphoria?”

“Maybe it happened,” Grantaire says, tar black slinking across his vision, “because I developed an accurate picture of my own self-worth.”

“Subjective and unhelpful,” Fantine retorts in a sunburst of lemon. “You said it eases when you’re with your friends?”

“Maybe they’re rubbing off on me,” he suggests.

“Maybe you’ve been isolating yourself and your brain is trying to self-motivate you to not give up on yourself or your friends. Maybe it’ll keep getting better as long as you’re dedicated to getting better. You’ll never know if you don’t try.”

Irritatingly, he’s pretty sure she’s right, and even more so, he can’t stop seeing her out of spite, because she sees him for free.

His life is improving, sort of, at least peripherally. He has friends and a sleep schedule and a therapist and sometimes when he speaks it’s almost like it was when he was a kid, and filled with wonder at the sight of his own voice. Mostly when he’s with his friends, but that’s so frequent now, he’s sort of anticipating the day when the sight of his own voice doesn’t fill him with dread.

Fantine points out to him, once, that it’s strange the black in his voice bothers him, but the black in Enjolras’s doesn’t. It doesn’t really feel strange to Grantaire, but once she’s pointed it out it is inescapably there in the back of his mind. Enjolras goes black when he’s angry or disappointed or very, very tired, and it’s not a reflection of who he is, so much as what he’s feeling. Grantaire’s black feels more like the physical embodiment of his flaws: how much of a burden he is on his friends and family, how much he he struggles and sometimes hates himself, that he drinks and smokes and doesn’t sleep enough or drink enough water, that he couldn’t do academia, that he can barely do life.  
Sometimes that sounds like bullshit, and he thinks his voice is black because it’s what he expects. He tries to expect better of himself. He meditates with Cosette and Marius and helps Joly study on nights when they both can’t sleep; he tries to make his friends laugh or himself laugh, or both; he gets out of bed on days when he feels like he can’t. Grantaire makes an effort, and it sort of feels like the universe is making one back.  
Sometimes, his life is terrible, still.

Grantaire can tell he’s going to have a migraine from the moment he wakes up. His head is pounding rhythmically as his alarm blares, and his colors hurt his eyes as much as his lamp does; he knows, logically, that he can’t be light sensitive to lights that only exist in his head, but he is. Their presence is bright and jarring, the sound of his bed springs shifting as he sits up like a thunderclap and his vision obscured by orange lightning, which fades slow and leaves him woozy and unsteady.

He unlocks his phone, and squinting, turns his brightness all the way down, before texting his boss to beg off work, then goes back to sleep, hoping to sleep off his burgeoning migraine.

Grantaire wakes again at five, head pounding like a kickdrum. He tries to ease himself out of bed, but to no avail, and he walks blindly into the kitchen and bumps into his table twice trying to scrounge up some food. He shouldn’t go to the Musain, he shouldn’t, but he’s always struggled with what he should and shouldn’t do, so he does.

Outside is far worse than inside; every sound is a spike of pain, and the cacophony fills his vision with a rainbow of sharp colors. Grantaire’s vision gets more and more obscured, head pounding more fiercely as he struggles there, trying to outrun his rapidly decreasing his field of vision. When he finally reaches the café (after a ten minute walk that feels like hours), it’s all he can do to collapse into a booth and not the floor.

Grantaire rests his head in the cradle of his arms, and tries to block out light and sound through sheer stubbornness. Even with his eyes closed, every clink of a spoon on a mug, every chair scratching across the floor, every time Musichetta calls out on order explodes across his vision, bursting with color and pain. Grantaire is nauseous, now, too, from the pain. He shouldn’t have come, he knew that before he even left, but he’s here now, so he’ll have to bear it.

He’s not even sure if he could make his way home now, even if he wanted to.

The café gets suddenly louder as Les Amis file in, and Grantaire regrets every decision he’s made to date, because somehow his whole life has culminated in Courfeyrac yelling, “Good afternoons, citizens!” in electric violent, like no one ever talked to him about inside voices.

He keeps his head down as everyone mills about, pointedly ignoring anyone trying to engage with him and seriously considering purchasing the noise-canceling headphones that have sat in his amazon cart for three years.

Everyone quiets when Enjolras clears his throat, and Grantaire barely resists the urge to lift his head and looks, because staring at Enjolras is ingrained in him, now, as natural as breathing.

“Is he drunk?” is the first thing that Enjolras says, and Grantaire knew he should have stayed home. It’s not said in anger—his tone is only barely verging on disappointed—but the assumption says enough.

He squeezes his eyes shut tighter, like that will help, and tries to melt into the table.

“I don’t think so,” Combeferre says. He must be very close, because he rests a warm hand on the back of Grantaire’s neck and says, as softly as he can, “Migraine?”

Grantaire tries to nod while also not moving his head or any other part of him, glad, for the first time, that Combeferre is well acquainted with Grantaire’s medical history. Combeferre does something, because suddenly Les Amis have quieted down, and Bahorel is easing him up off the table and mostly carrying him into the back room and it’s so quiet Grantaire could cry.

“Do you have anything you can take?” Combeferre murmurs, as Bahorel sets him down at a table.

Grantaire shakes his head slightly, eyes still closed. “Needed to see doctor for refill. Couldn’t afford doctor. Refill, either.” A black cloud, like buzzing flies.

Enjolras’s noise of anger is an explosion of excruciating scarlet, and Grantaire winces. He hadn’t even known Enjolras was there. It’s more embarrassing, somehow, to be carried back here like an invalid while Enjolras watched, while Enjolras continues to watch.

Combeferre speaks in a firm grey-blue, soft and also threatening. “Enjolras, if you cannot control yourself, please leave. R, do you know what you were on?”

Grantaire is sorry to have missed the no doubt extremely chagrined look on Enjolras’s face. “A triptan.”

“I have something then,” Joly whispers, also apparently there. “Maybe not the same, but do you want it?”

Grantaire nods again, and then there’s a pill in his hand and water in the other, and he takes it automatically, so happy for his friends who are caring and quiet. Especially quiet.

“Jehan’s not here. Want one of us to help you home?” Combeferre rests his hand on the back of Grantaire’s neck again, and Grantaire lets himself be soothed. 

Grantaire nods again, weakly. He just wants to be in bed. “Can’t see.”

Enjolras’s attempt at volume modulation is a failure, but Grantaire gives him an “E” for effort. His voice is sunset red, bright, just too bright. “Why can’t he see?”

“Auras?” Joly offers softly, and Grantaire is unnecessarily grateful that Combeferre doesn’t correct him.

“Oh.” Enjolras’s voice is softer when he speaks again, a trickle of gold dripping across the black of Grantaire’s closed eyes. “I can take him.”

There is silence, then soft footsteps. Joly speaks again, but they must have moved further away, because Grantaire can barely make it out. “That pill is probably going to knock him out, let him sleep it off, okay? He might want caffeine, sometimes that helps, but if you’re feeding him caffeine, make sure you give him water, too, so he doesn’t get dehydrated. Make sure you feed him. I’m giving you two more of these pills for him, okay? He’ll know if he needs them. Call if you need anything.”

“This all right, Grantaire?” Combeferre asks, blue lightening with concern.

Grantaire nods, and Enjolras helps him up, and ushers him back into the world. He opens his eyes as much as he can, not wanting to walk into a street lamp, but Enjolras guides him out of the way of obstacles, and getting home is much easier than getting to the Musain was.

Enjolras unlocks the door with Grantaire’s keys, and helps him through the door and all but pushes him into bed. “Do you need anything?” he asks, softly, like he’s learned his lesson. It looks like the color of a mango to Grantaire, way more orange than gold, but soft, like he could sleep on it.

It’s possible, he thinks as he shucks his pants without looking, that he’s a little high. “I’m okay,” he says, and Enjolras is so near, and that must be why Grantaire’s voice takes on some color, yellow, then yellow-green. “I’ll be okay,” he mutters, collapsed against his pillow. His vision fills with green and he has just enough time to think, ‘huh, where did that come from?’ before he’s asleep.

 

Grantaire’s migraine is still there when he wakes up, but less. His phone tells him he’s been asleep for nine hours, which is nowhere near his record, but longer than he expected. He can see an area larger than a pinhole, and the sound of his bed doesn’t make his head hurt so badly he feels sick. He drags himself to the kitchen for coffee and water and maybe toast, if he’s feeling adventurous, and is surprised to see Enjolras, sitting at his messy kitchen table and practically vibrating as he flips through Grantaire’s much annotated copy of Mark Doty’s “From Bethlehem in Broad Daylight.”

“You stayed,” Grantaire says, and his words pop like a soap bubble at the edge of his vision, grey, but almost a green-grey; military-like. He does a double take at his own vision, but Enjolras is clearly too used to him, because he doesn’t react.

“How are you feeling?” Enjolras’s voice is still pitched low, considerate and quiet and lacking its usual intensity, like a photograph of a sunrise.

Grantaire shrugs and walks over to the coffee machine. “Better than last night—thank you, by the way, for rescuing me.”

“Of course!” Enjolras says with so much vehemence that it lingers in Grantaire’s sight for an extra moment before fizzling out. His back is to Enjolras, so he has no idea what expression Enjolras could possibly be wearing when he says, “I owe you an apology.”

“For…helping me?” Grantaire hazards, pouring coffee grounds into the filter without measuring. Brave people, he has decided, can make coffee by feel. Brave, stupid people.

“What? No. For what I said at the meeting. For assuming you were drunk. It was uncharitable and unwarranted and really, really shitty, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why it’s the first thing I said.”

Grantaire turns around and shrugs. “To be fair, I’m sure I looked at least hungover if not actually drunk.”

Enjolras’s face does the same stern thing it does when he’s talking about justice. “I still shouldn’t have assumed. You’ve never been drunk at a meeting before, there was no reason for that to be the case—and if it was, then you were probably in need of support and not condemnation. So I’m sorry, and I hope you can forgive me.”

When the gold fades from Grantaire’s eyes, he is faced with the most earnest Enjolras he has ever seen, and he smiles. “Yeah, we’re good. I appreciate the apology, but like, completely, we’re completely good.”

Enjolras smiles back, wide and disarming. “Can I steal a cup of coffee? I sat up all night living my worst life and shaking my way through an anxiety spiral.”

Grantaire almost says yes automatically as the coffee sputters it’s readiness, but then he remembers his brand new coffee philosophy and holds up a finger as he pours himself a taste. Stupid. His idea was definitely stupid. “Yes? But it’s fucking awful so at your own risk.”

Enjolras laughs golden pearls and moves into Grantaire’s space to get to the coffee. Grantaire lets him get closer, closer than he would have before he knew Enjolras has stayed up nine hours to make sure he was okay and that they were okay. Enjolras smiles at him, takes a sip, and immediately gags.

Grantaire tries really hard not to laugh, but Enjolras laughs first, and they are both laughing, green and gold and twisting in his vision like snakes. Enjolras shakes the taste off and puts on his serious face again. “Also. I have a trust fund.”

“Okay?” Grantaire says, puzzled, and still sort of green. He feels frantic with excitement and confusion and the hope that he can somehow maintain this dip out of self-loathing. Fantine would probably say something about the strides he’s made and the support systems he’s built, but she’s not here, so he’s going to go with A Fluke and follow that up with Hope.

Enjolras takes a deep breath, puffing himself up like a bird. “So if you need help paying for medical expenses or food or anything, please ask me. And before you say anything, I also do this for Marius and Feuilly, and have, at various times, helped out almost all of Les Amis. I might not be able to affect wide change—yet—but I can help the people I care about, and if I have anything to say about it, I will.”

Grantaire is speechless, touched, and honestly overwhelmed with affection for Enjolras, who is standing before him, still impossibly beautiful, but so real, and uncommon, and a part of Grantaire’s life. “I…yeah, okay. Thank you, Apollo. I don’t even know what to say.”

Enjolras grins. “Say you’ll take care of yourself, please. I’d hate if anything happened to you.” He takes another sip of the coffee and gags again, glaring into the cup with betrayal written all across his face, and Grantaire wants to kiss him.

“I have synesthesia,” Grantaire blurts. “When it gets bad it blocks out my vision. And I’m trans.” His words are shockingly green, seafoam, maybe. He can’t think of the last time he told anyone this information where it wasn’t medically necessary, or he wasn’t drunk. But he’s sober now, and his words are bright, and maybe his future is also bright.

Enjolras’s confusion are peaks and valleys of crimson. “Okay? You don’t have to tell me any of this.”

“I know. I just wanted us to be on the same page vis-à-vis me, so that when I ask you if I can kiss you in a moment, there’s nothing I haven’t told you. We can talk more about either and or both later? But you waited all night sitting up in my kitchen and I want to kiss you.”

Enjolras’s eyes widen, and then he smiles, bright, and wide. “Cool, very cool. Yes. We are absolutely on the same page about you and me and things. Quick spoiler, I will absolutely say yes when you ask me.”

Grantaire is only sort of surprised at Enjolras’s reply. He thinks he should be less surprised. Looking back at their interactions, there were countless times when Enjolras leaned in too close, maintained eye contact for too long, smiles too wide. “Cool. Awesome.” He reaches up slowly and cups Enjolras’s cheek. Enjolras leans into the touch, which keeps it from being too scary; Enjolras wants it, too. It’s new and shockingly intimate, but he isn’t afraid as much as he is excited. “Can I kiss you?”

“Absolutely yes,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire kisses him.

It’s short, just long enough for Grantaire to know it’s something he wants to do again and again, and then he’s pulling away and Enjolras is still smiling at him, awed and soft around the eyes.

“Go on a date with me,” Enjolras suggests.

Grantaire laughs, delighted, and his fizzles and pops in gradients of green. He knows this won’t fix everything; there will still be sad days, black days, dysphoria days, and can’t-get-out-bed-days, but they take a back seat to the absolute thrill of excited anticipation that races through him with a shiver. He can have the shitty days and also have good days, with his friends, with Enjolras (maybe even with kisses from Enjolras) and for the first time in a long time, Grantaire is pretty sure he deserves this. “Absolutely yes,” he says, and it’s sort of like a supernova.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! feel free to chat with me on [tumblr](http://racetrackthehiggins.tumblr.com) or buy me a [coffee ](https://ko-fi.com/A0113A9L)


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